Are you happy in your work? Spiritually uplifted? Such questions may be fundamental to the good of the nation and all the people in it, but would be regarded as irrelevant, even subversive, by the majority of economists, politicians and business executives. The purpose of work, they would say, is to make money for employers in the private sector or meet targets in the public sector, to save money on unemployment payments, to raise living standards, to prevent the diseases or mischief associated with idleness, and to grow the Gross Domestic Product. Happiness in work comes a long way down the list. Our culture is biased towards the view that everyone would rather not work than work, that work is in a sense punitive – that drudgery is the natural order of things. As the Douay-Rheims v